When Irshad Manji began writing her latest book, Don’t Label Me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times, she knew she had to take a different approach than she had employed in the past to communicating with those who disagree with her.

No longer would the outspoken educator, advocate and author of the lightning-rod books The Trouble With Islam Today (formerly titled The Trouble With Islam) and Allah, Liberty and Love be a subscriber to the take-no-prisoners approach.

“As a matter of fact, I did have an ah-ha moment,” Manji says. “About three months into the writing of Don’t Label Me, I knew I did not want to lapse into a polemic again. This had to be something more inviting than a rant. I was frankly beginning to slide into my very opinionated way.”

Enter Lily, an old deaf and blind Havanese-maybe-terrier-cross rescue dog. Lily was Manji’s first dog, since Manji was raised in a religious Muslim family that believes dogs are evil. “One of the ways we bonded is that I would talk to her about the ideas swimming in my head,” says Manji, who lives in Honolulu with her wife, Laura Albano, and their rescue dogs.

The idea for a new book about true, honest rapport was hatched. In Don’t Label Me, Manji has an imaginary conversation in which Lily asks questions, presses points and is the devil’s advocate that tilts its little dog head while asking Manji, “Really?”

“When I began to write it as a dialogue between myself and Lily, the various pieces of what I wanted to say and how I was wanting to say it fell into place,” says Manji, the founder of the Moral Courage Project. “She plays the role in the book of challenging me at almost every turn. She brought out the internal debate I’m having with myself. I knew if I was writing this as a conversation with Lily that I would never become too harsh in the way I express myself, because I would never become harsh with Lily.”

It may seem like a gimmicky construct, but it works as a way for Manji to argue that we need to put aside our tribal tendencies and differences and really talk to the people we don’t agree with. We need to stop vilifying the other side and maybe they won’t retreat and return with radical sentiments that can be found, say, in the white-nationalist movement.

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It’s how to avoid Backlash 101.

Manji’s strategic point in this book is clear and clever — and easily doable.

“I’m not asking anybody to compromise or dilute their convictions by listening to people who disagree with them,” she says. “Not at all. What I’m saying is you can both stand your ground and seek common ground so that you can be heard in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise.”

The New York Times bestselling author says the best way to start this approach is the best way to start anything — pause and take a breath.

“Let’s start with the basics. When you are — let’s use a buzzword of the day, triggered — by somebody else’s beliefs, first take a breath. Literally just take a breath, because when you do that you are working with your biology, not against it and you’re literally decelerating the blood rush in your body,” says Manji.

“You are slow-jamming the primitive part of your brain. That allows you to, in fact, outwit the impulse to attack and to label. By slowing yourself down just a bit, you are able to tap into the more evolved part of the brain that allows you to make more rational choices.”

By “slow-jamming,” our lizard brains, she says, we are much more able to find a better balance between emoting and contemplating. If you truly listen to what the other person is saying, you are offering up respect, not giving up giving up power.

“We first need to remember the basic law of human psychology, which is this: If you want to be heard, you have to first be willing to hear,” says Manji. “The more questions you ask, the more heard they will feel.”

The idea of slowing down and taking a breath can also be a simple adjustment that reminds you to not jump to conclusions. Not to hastily attach labels.

For Manji, Lily was an example of the narrow and usually negative conceptions that come with looking at a book and deciding the cover was enough.

“Whatever labels other people place on Lily — for example, old and blind — they would never appreciate her fully if that was all they were going by,” says Manji about her late, great companion. “That again was a core lesson that I tried to impart in the book — that if we are really interested in diversity, we won’t reduce people to the labels we have for them.”

“If we are really interested in diversity, we won’t reduce people to the labels we have for them.”

And, as Manji pointed out on a recent guest spot on the HBO’s political show Real Time with Bill Maher, she herself has been covered with labels.

So if we know it’s bad, why can’t we stop the impulse to label others?

“The brain does need short cuts for the information coming our way,” Manji says. “Of course, the problem with those short cuts and in life itself is that sometimes, and in this case often, shortcuts actually get you more lost than you already feel.”

Looking back, Manji wishes she had practised what she is preaching now when she was travelling the world and scorching the earth with her speeches and interviews about the problems she had with the traditional beliefs of Islam.

As a young, gay, female Muslim, she wanted reform. She wanted her religion to move into the 21st century. What she got was a lot of interest from the media, some support, plenty of arguments and lots of death threats. In turn, she became fully loaded and spoiling for a fight.

“I wish I had done more of what I am writing about now,” says Manji. “I, too, was far too defensive. And when people would label me, rather than ask them, ‘Hey just slow down here and let me slow down too. What do you mean by that? Where are you coming from?’ I wish I would have asked those questions instead of merely reacting.”

In June 2011, Manji was in the makeup room at an NBC studio when suddenly she collapsed.

That health scare caused her to check in on herself.

“It reminded me the world will not stop spinning with or without my voice,” says Manji. “I realized I have to take the burden of winning off my shoulders and just have a conversation.”

While 2019 Manji may be mellower in her approach, she is by no means free of strong opinions. It’s just that, these days, those opinions are focused on how we can better discuss those opinions.

“If there is one thing I would like people to walk away with from this book,” she says, “it is the simple idea that you should take disagreement as an invitation to engagement. Not an invitation to detachment.”